Surfing. It is what I love. There is nothing in the world that
compares to it besides my family; yet I receive things from the ocean and a
piece of foam and fiberglass beneath my feet that I cannot gain from anywhere,
including from my family. I think many of my friends can attest to that in our
shared love for the sport. I call it a sport, because of its physical
requirements and competitive capability, but it is so much more.. I really
enjoy playing football (soccer –Americans), but everything is controlled by man
on the field, as in so many other sports.
When in the water, surfing, who is in control? The relationship between
man and Mother Nature in surfing has such a spiritual connection and demand for
respect that cannot be felt in so many other forms of sport. Learning to ride each different wave
every time you stand up on a new one, anticipating what the wave is going to do,
where no one wave is like another. I can liken a wave to a new girl I am
kissing for the first time, where I want to show the wave my tricks, but I have
to be mindful of how the wave itself is going to break and perform it’s own
tricks, being able to react and accept the difference in styles. That is where the sheer beauty of
surfing lies, in the style, the art form, a surfer embodies when riding a wave,
reacting and riding with the wave. No two surfers surf alike, no matter how
hard they try to imitate each other. It is impossible to read and judge a wave
exactly like someone else and emulate their style, perfectly. Some person may have a full bag of
tricks, but if they look like a crazed maniac when pulling them out, disregarding
the form and intention of the wave, then the tricks are thrown to the wind,
unimportant disturbing matters of movement that can make someone cringe in witnessing.
Each time I step foot in the water I learn something new because no two waves
behave similarly. That is why I can say that the two most important things in
my life are my family and surfing, because both of them are constant learning
experiences for me. There is no
reason for me to surround myself with stagnant matter. One thing that we can all
agree on is that family matters are constantly demanding and changing, and
those surfers out there, we can agree that we will never know when we have
reached our peak of understanding about ourselves in the ocean and our/it’s
capabilities.
It is a balance that I find between
these two pillars of sanctity that controls my thoughts, my actions, the way I
approach a situation, and the way I reason. I avoid clichés, because they rather chap my ass, but
unavoidably I have to say these pillars are my yin and my yang. My mother
taught me to treat others as I wanted to be treated, to be healthy, proper
manners, to share, to love, and to burp reallly loud, (I guess that cancels my
proper manners talk, but there’s always a time and place to ‘let it rip
chocolate chip,’ as she would say): My father taught me integrity, loyalty, and
to be hard working: My brother taught me how to get my ass kicked and pick
myself up again. Then there is my mother ocean, who has taught me patience, to
be grateful, and above all, to be humble.
I can be stripped from the ocean,
but the ocean cannot be stripped from me. Salt, sand, and foam, fill my veins.
Those standout great waves I’ve ridden fill the voids in my head, where they
are constantly playing on repeat inside my brain, so that anywhere I go in the
world, there I am in my favorite place, at home, in the ocean, re-riding those
waves over and over again. The beautiful thing about our brain is that it is
not linear in thought but more like a spider’s web. Meaning that no matter how
long ago an event occurred, it still feels like it happened yesterday, because
the more we revisit that thought, or open that cabinet in our brain and pull
out that memory, it stays in the present. It is the reason I can still smell,
hear, and taste the difference in waters and sea air from different places I
have surfed. I can tell you how the beach was at Trestles, San Onofre Beach,
California when I was twelve years old, surfing in the NSSA National Championships,
and exiting the water after my first heat to see my brother talking with a man
who offered me my first sponsorship of riding for Town and Country Surfboards,
(whose logo is coincidentally a yin-yang). I still remember each wave I rode in
that heat, the struggle I had exiting the water due to coming in on the wrong
side of the rocks, slipping in the cracks and getting sea urchins in my feet,
and the unexpected rush of ecstatic excitement when I finally reached my family
and heard those words spoken to me that changed the next few years of my life. The
ever presence of humbleness that had already been instilled in me from the
ocean, which I just exited, led the feeling of excitement about my abilities in
the water to be really foreign to me. The idea that someone, a stranger,
watched me surf, and believed in me enough to ask me to represent their company
in doing something that I did just for fun everyday I could with my friends and
family was unimaginable at the time.
I still remember the pain and
humility I felt the next year when I returned to the same beach to surf in the
championships again and did not achieve the results I expected out of myself.
The presence of pressure inside me to perform before the companies I was
representing on the beach watching me that was lacking the year before was
bizarre for me. The surf was much
bigger that year and I had moved up an age group to where I had a really
competitive heat. I had caught one
decent wave all the way to the inside and spent the majority of the remainder
of my heat scrambling to get back out to the line up. I was cussing, fighting, paddling and kicking with all of my
100 lbs, taking wave after wave on top of my head, while I caught glimpses of
my competitors catching wave after wave out in front of me. I was praying to
see a clear path after the next wave broke, stuck in limbo, exhausted, overpowered
and overmatched. One pillar present, my mother ocean, humbling me and reminding
me that not everyday is my day, exiting the water and trudging through the
sand, head low, defeated, with pats on the back from my other pillar, my
family, and words of encouragement from my friends and team managers.
I sat down to write this post about
the experience I had surfing in Cameroon, West Africa a few weeks ago and these
memories came pouring back to me. They resounded in me and reminded me of the
utter importance of the sanctity of my pillars of rock that keep me
grounded. I have been away from my
family and from surfing for seven months now, and realized that these two
pillars are one in the same. There is no one with out the other. We grew up on
the beach; it made me who I am today. We were surfing together as a family, sun
up to sun down. Beach days were everyday. If I wasn’t surfing with my direct
family with mom on the beach, then I was gone all day hopping the trolley
trying to find the best spot to surf up and down the beach, with my rat pack of
little scrawny longhaired friends from the neighborhood, who all shared that
wild passion for the ocean and that need to surf, forever. If there weren’t any waves and we
weren’t in the water than we were trying our luck with whose mom would let us
crash the house and watch surf movies until we were kicked to the next mom’s
house. When we were given the boot
from all of the moms than we took to the streets, skateboarding, building ramps
to slide on that resembled waves, always trying to get another taste; there was
no better drug.
Now, I am 23 years old, a Peace
Corps volunteer located in Menji, a village that is the headquarter of a small
sub-division in the South West region of Cameroon, West Africa, about 10 hours
to the coast and about 14 hours to where I knew there was a possibility to go
surfing. I had gone to the closest
beach a few months back, Limbe Beach, and body surfed until my heart was content,
but still didn’t get that taste of surfing something beneath my feet. The group
of volunteers that I came here with in June all had to meet back up at a
mandatory weeklong training called “In Service Training,” from December 9th
– 16th. It just so happened
that the Peace Corps’ administration decided that this was going to take place
at Kribi Beach, where I had found out that it might be possible to go surfing.
I researched the Internet for
anything about surfing in Cameroon. I found a site with a post from someone
mentioning surfing in Kribi Beach.
All that it read was something like, ‘If you are in Kribi, Cameroon and
you want to surf, go to Tara Plage Restaurant, go to the bar and ask for
Gabriella and he can take you surfing.’ This was all the information I had, and
had no idea how reliable it would be, no date for when this post had been made,
but at least I had something. I
made the daylong journey down to Kribi, got in very late, ate and drank with my
buddies I had not seen in a few months, and found a schedule for our training. The
schedule read that everyday we had breakfast by 7am and we were in trainings until
5pm, with the last two days having some free time. I knew if I had a shot at
surfing it would be in those last two days. During the week I asked around to
hotel employees about the information I had and they all acted like I was crazy
when I was trying to explain surfing in my poor French abilities. They did tell
me that Tara Plage Restaurant existed and it was about three kilometers on the
other side of town. I had enough information, now I just needed the time to get
to that restaurant. The second to last day came and we had a half-day of free
time, so I and another adventurous friend, Carlos, went out searching for the
mysterious Cameroonian surf god, Gabriella. After the first taxi took us to the
wrong place and being redirected by a different taxi, we traveled down a long
red clay road and just after a military blockade there was a sign that read, Tara
Plage Restaurant & Bar. After we got through the blockade and reached the
hotel, we got off the bikes and I asked a man out front if there was someone by
the name of Gabriel that works there. He looked confused and my hopes were
dwindling, but another person over heard me and corrected me saying, “Yes there
is a Gabriella, not a Gabriel, but he isn’t here today, you can take his number
if you would like.” I jumped on it and called the man, he spoke in very good
English saying, “Sure you want to learn how to surf, I will be there tomorrow
all day, come back then.” I reassured him that I knew how to surf and that I
just wanted to use a board if possible. It was refreshing to hear someone have
knowledge and speak about the ocean and surfing. He said that it wasn’t the
right time of year for surfing, it is better in June and July and the tide is
better in the afternoon. I told him I would absolutely be there the next day.
The following day we were finished
with training by noon and I rushed back to the restaurant to find Gabriella. He
was not there like he said he would be and was now not answering his phone. A
few friends and I sat and drank a few beers waiting around, him finally calling
me back saying, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” (this meaning, it could be fifteen
minutes, three hours, or the next day in African time.) I lost hope after a few
hours and decided to body surf, after an hour or so of body surfing I see a man
on the beach waving me in. I came in excited to find a cheerful Gabriella
explaining, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I am the manager at the bar and I am very
busy, but follow me to see about the board.” I have no idea what to expect out
of these boards, being such a foreign place for surfing where everyone lives
their lives day to day on the little money they have. He takes me to a shed
behind the hotel and I enter the dark damp musty room to find two board bags where he
pulls out two decently shaped boards around 6 ft. long and in actually really
good condition. He said he had made a friend some time ago from France that
promised he would send him back some boards and he came through on his word. He
let me take one of them out and by this time it was about 4pm with the sun
setting just after 6pm.
The waves were small, about thigh
high, and about 30 meters off of the beach. They had decent power and were enough to do a quick turn or
two before jumping off on the shore. Once the sun finally set and the tide came
in all the way making the waves crash directly on shore, I returned the board
to the shed, grabbed a beer and conversed with some beautiful girls at the bar;
that is, before they told me 1000 FCFA/hr ($2/hr) and asked if I had a room
there where we could “dance.” I parted ways from Tara Plage Restaurant soon
after exiting that situation with an irremovable smile tattooed across my face.
I was happy as a peacock returning to our hotel, hitting play on those brief
wave memories in my brain experienced shortly beforehand, sitting off to the
side of our hotel’s dance floor, sipping on a few more beers, enjoying watching
my friends cut loose dancing, but mentally not there as I reveled quietly in my
ecstasy of experiencing surfing in Cameroon. The experience of finding the
restaurant, finally meeting Gabriella and getting the surfboard, and actually
riding a few waves before it got dark made everything hard to believe with the
little information I had originally to go on to accomplish the feet. It didn’t
matter where I was in the world at that moment, I was happy and I was at home.
